Thread: 99%ers -- Is change needed?

I've been noticing this little propaganda piece posted on Facebook friends' walls, and I eventually got annoyed with it enough to write a response. I'm curious as to T-I's take on the matter. Here's the image:


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And my response:

See in America, we grow up with this ideal that anyone can promote up the social ladder. It doesn't matter who your parents were. If you work hard, live frugally and responsibly, good things will inevitably happen, and you can become rich and prosperous. (The corollary to this of course is that if you are poor, you deserve it.) Like the lyrics to the song, however, 'where you are depends on where you began.'

It isn't that it is impossible to promote up the social/economic ladder. It is just very, very unlikely.

Let's ignore the fact that the above picture is propaganda funded by the 1%ers and that person likely does not exist. You know the following is the more likely outcome.

"I am the 99%
I’m a college senior. In the honors program, 3.37 GPA, active on campus, hard working student.
Even with 24,000 dollars in scholarship money I’m graduating 23,000 dollars in debt. I would love to go on but I can’t afford it.
I wold love to buy milk and groceries weekly, but I won’t get my first pay check from my new job for two weeks.
18 credits, 15-20 hours a week working, 10+ hours as a leader on campus, countless hours studying. Busting my ass to be the 1st in my family to get a 4 year degree, and I’m extremely lucky and I’m grateful for my blessings but this was not and is not the American dream. Working hard to get in debt and have little no job prospects was never the dream." (source: occupywallstreet.org)

Listen, I can't say I have any answers for how we should proceed as a society. I do know however that the American Middle Class has been terribly eroded. Our government and governing corporations (well hell, they own our politicians, right?) no longer serves the interests of the people. Something has to change.

Acknowledging that something is wrong and changes are needed is the first step. That is what the 99% movement is all about.

What's your thoughts on the whole 99%er movement? Is change needed?

I'm not for or against any side, I'm just gonna lay things out like I see them:

Originally Posted by oscarnater

Our government and governing corporations (well hell, they own our politicians, right?) no longer serves the interests of the people. Something has to change.

Governments and (governing) corporations are people also. Behind every political office seat and corporate logo is someone trying to achieve the same things the 99%ers are doing: obtain that little bit extra, get the edge. It may be a better job to pay for both electricity and food on the table or it may be to get the luxury sedan instead of riding the bus to work.

Yes, elected officials are elected by the public to serve the public's interests but of course they're almost always going to be self-serving first. This is an extreme example but if it came down to it I'd always put me and my family ahead of the rest of the world. Survival is human nature.

These protests are going on in my city and I am willing to bet significant money that the majority of the people have no clue about the entire big picture. They see their own little slice of the world, gather together, march, make signs, chant and hope/think people care. After it's over they go back to whatever they were doing before. They don't become involved in their cause, they don't try to learn the system and invoke the change from within.

To me I understand their cause and end goals but their methods don't make sense: when was the last time you did something because someone was chanting about you and marching around with a sign?

Even if their methods work, there will never be equality or anything close to it. To put it bluntly: life is unfair and stuff happens. Doesn't matter if you don't accept it or like it, it's simply how things are. Never in human history has there been harmony in any society and I seriously doubt there ever will be.

It is a complex issue. It is easy to blame Wall Street for everything, but people need to take some personal responsibility as well, the level of consumer debt is absolutely ridiculous. Sure there are some people, students without outside financial support, that have little choice but to generate debt if they wish to graduate, but most of the people that are in debt, borrowed the money to pay for a holiday, or a new car, or something else which is great, but far from essential.

The banks are certainly not blameless, they made it easy for people to borrow money and rack up silly amounts of debt compared to their earnings. They also marketed debt relentlessly. Cast your mind back to all those TV ads "Can't afford that dream holiday, no problem just pick up the phone and get instant loan approval" or something along those lines.

Then came the derivatives boom, which allowed banks to offer high risk loans, into the sub prime market. Completely irresponsible, but I still think lenders need to take some personal responsibility, they took on debt they could not afford. The banks should not have sold it to them, but they should not have bought it either.

The final major issue, was the idea that people did not see the collapse coming, and I am disgusted by the lie we constantly hear in the media that no-one saw it coming. Plenty of people saw it coming. They were just ignored.

Someone that did see this seeing was Warren Buffet. Probably the foremost financial mind in the world today, prior to the collapse he called derivatives 'weapons of mass financial destruction', and 2 years prior to the collapse Charlie Munger his partner wrote a paper predicting a collapse, so severe that many financial institutions would not survive. Unfortunately no-one took any notice, and people even said he must be going senile. They did not want to hear that the gravy train was heading for a crash. Neither did the politicians who had deregulated the financial sector and were reaping the reward in tax dollars, and neither did the consumers, that had become addicted to the lifestyle that debt allowed them to obtain.

So what I am saying is that, governments, businesses, and consumers, all need to take responsibility, for the part they played.

I take your question about 99%'ers and I raise you to a bit of a revelation. Money is simply not needed in this world or ever. Why? Does it take money for you to help someone. Is it needed on a biological basis simply put no. So why does it take money for a instructor to teach you to be better.

One reason greed. here is an example of why money is not needed. If everyone did things to benefit others those benefits would in turn go full circle and reach you as well. Example: The farmers farms thier crops and sends it to the factory, the factory processes the food, The food goes out to the town including the farmers,the factory workers.My point being with proper managment and a decent work force of like 4 hours a day (if everyone worked on the planet we simply would not need compensation) money can be abolished for good.

We just have to want to change our ways. money is the main reason in this world why we have crime. People become desperate. In all of us we are all good people but eventually greed takes over. 90% of all crimes are commited because of money or out of the feel that they need to do it. So no it's not fair that a young man goes to college takes out a loan, becomes seriously disabled on the job,files bankruptcy only to find that student loans are not forgivable even for the disabled.

Its not fair that a single mom of 3 kids has to leave her oldest of 11 to watch her siblings so she can goto college to have a better life for them. Only to have her kids taken away because of neglect. This world is built to keep everyone crawlign and scraping the bottem of the barrel scrounging for every las bit of moursal they can find.

This world needs a change the economy is built on a self destructive mechanism. the reasoning is simple as inflation of prices go higher and higher the worl will continually find themselves ina resession very so 10-15 years. all because people cannot simply pick a price and stick with it. .. gah this post is getting so long. but I hope my point has gotten across in my slightly derranged state lol.

Those are my two cents.

Hi. Didn't George Soros give a speech at one of the occupations and was cheered as being a champion of the 99%? I do know that he is one of the 1%. He is a Builderburger lapdog (the 1% of the 1%). If he champions something, then the Builderburgers have a plan.

Actually, the Occupy Wall St. movement is just called the 99%, the 99ers are a group of about 4 million US citizens that have been unemployed for longer than 99 weeks. The US government only allows up to 99 weeks for unemployment benefits and after someone has passed that mark, they no longer receive said benefits. It is to my understanding though, that the 99ers have joined up with the 99%.

As for that picture, I would like to see their little sign they are holding up in 5 years when their college degree gets them no job, because their simply aren't any. I am sure their sign will look something like this:

Definitely a complex issue, but I struggle to understand why so much blame has been put onto banks. Banks follow the same philosophy as any other business; maximize profitability for the stakeholders, whilst operating lawfully.

I believe this is a sovereign problem, instigated by the start of governmental repeal of the Glass Steagall act under Clinton in 1999, which was enacted after the great depression to separate Commercial Banking from Investment banking. This allowed commercial banks to get involved in the derivatives boom - and as soon as one bank begins to perform well in this market, the rest will follow, otherwise they will be underperforming in their market - and why shouldn't they? Its completely legal to do so. Once it becomes clear that the value of the traded financial instruments are seriously overinflated, which surfaced in Nov 2007, then you have the first stage of the crisis, the credit crunch. Banks figure out that they need to stop lending to ensure that they can still provide the peoples money and not generate anymore bad debt.

When banks stop lending to each other, to other businesses, and to the people, anyone with cash flow problems and debt begins to default…. and so the chain of events of 2008 went on. The mechanics of our constructed financial system requires the constant flow of cash in a society for there to be growth and prosperity "for all", hence the success of all the quantitative easing measures in 2009 which provided liquidity from the government when the banks and the people were all

The government also doesn't always represent the peoples interests, there's a serious disconnect in the UK for sure, and it seems a lot worse in the US, especially when you read articles such as news weeks recently published "The Get Rich Congress" indicating how laws are being lobbied for the benefit of gov representatives investments. The Get-Rich Congress - The Daily Beast

...and to top it all off the US's Vetocratic Partisan government seems to find it impossible to unite over any issue even though its clear tha some urgent decisions need to be made.

So to go back to topic; there is a fundamental structural problem in our government, in our financial system, in regulation, and its not being helped by self serving politicians and an absence of real leadership or vision, and its not going to be resolved by Occupy movement with its soundbites of "I am 99%", those are the 1%ers keeping me down - to me this is just a big outcry of "Its not fair!"

What we need is a more educated response demanding specific implementable changes that could genuinely help the situation, because we're in a f'ing bad place right now and its going to get a shtload worse quite soon.

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When I did read the poster in the introduction post, I was amused.Does the author tells us he is so ignorrant, he will not even acknowledge the debt he has through the goverment? Sure his name is not on the debt but his passport says US Citizen so he is part of the people... sure he can move abroad but not everybody has this opportunity so somebody will have to pay the bill... )Will it ever change oh it does change all the time, the question is which side of the paradigme will win and to quote Buffett the class of the rich win this warfare ;)But we did know that when we accepted capitalism, we need to think certain parts of it and make a new deal about how we want to gain wealth and generate it in the future.

I personally believe in first, finding yourself and who you are then second, doing whatever makes you happy (but also being smart about things). If buying a new car makes you happy, or an ipad or a cell phone then do it, so long as you have the means. What's the point in waiting on the future until you start buying/doing the things you want? Last I heard, tomorrow isn't guaranteed. Millions of people are wiped off this planet every waking moment and we can't take the money with us so there is no use in saving it.

Sure, it's important to be smart and spend wisely, but that doesn't mean you have to save every dollar you earn. Who cares if you graduate college with a little debt, that's expected. It's better than going your 4+ years living miserable and busting your ass and never allowing yourself anytime for luxury. If the finer things in life don't satisfy you but working 24/7 does, then more power to you but that's not for everybody.

The most important things in life are 1) helping yourself. 2)helping others. 3)finding inner peace/being happy

I agree with the poster in some regards, but for the most part I feel it was created by some self-righteous nut who hasn't heard that the world is ending in T minus a year and about 21 days.